'Tis the season for watching holiday movies. As with all movies, everyone has their likes and dislikes. My siblings and I don't always enjoy the same films. One thing is predictable; that most movies my youngest sister recommends, my husband absolutely can't stand. Case in point, "Meet Me in St. Louis". Actually I didn't much like it either, it's a retro thing that didn't time travel well.
So we have a siblings Facebook page which we use to communicate things that we might need to share or discuss in common. One of my brothers got on the page last week and recommended a holiday movie that he enjoyed, "Feast of the Seven Fishes".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Seven_Fishes_(film)
I had low expectations, this brother and I don't often go for the same things. But we thought, what the heck, might as well try it. It turned out that all five of us and our spouses watched it and enjoyed it. It's a little gritty around the edges, but funny and touching.
I tend not to like the Hallmark Christmas movies, a little too saccharine. Some that I do like are "It's A Wonderful Life", "The Christmas Story", " The Sound of Music" (the original one with Julie Andrews), and "The Fourth Wise Man".
Do any of you have favorite holiday movies that you recommend?
"It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Carol" with Alistair Sim. I was a Jean Shepherd fan so, of course, "Christmas Story". America Magazine just had an article on "Joyeaux Noel", the movie about WWI French, Scottish and German combatants declaring a grass roots truce on Christmas Eve and celebrating it together. Haven't seen it in a while but I think it's a good candidate for a Christmas regular. Imagine a war that even had Catholics killing each other.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen Joyeaux Noel, will have to check it out. Reminds me of a true story told by a local WWII vet in the regional paper about American soldiers rescuing a wounded German soldier on Christmas eve. He ended up dying of his wounds anyway, but at least he wasn't alone.
DeleteSoldier from both sides have more in common with each other than the hot shots that send them into battle. This was the point made by the Wobblies before and during WWI and is what got their leaders jailed under the Anti-Sedition Act. That even occurred in an alternate history scifi alien invasion book by Harry Turtledove. Human and lizard combatants sometimes made connections despite being different species. Especially the infantry.
Delete"I sing of Olaf, glad and big" by e.e. cummings. Always scared a lot of the freshmen in Intro to Lit.
DeleteI'm avoiding anything sentimental and heart-warmy this year.
ReplyDeleteBut for those who enjoy uplift without too much schmaltz:
"Millions." May need subtitles b/c North Brit accents are hard to understand.
We like the George C Scott version of "A Christmas Carol."
I did like "It's A Wonderful Life", at least the first half-dozen or so times I watched it. I don't actually love "Meet Me In St. Louis", except that it's got two great songs, "The Trolley Song" and "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", and the tear-jerker ending always manages to jerk a few tears from me. The theme of longing for family and communal stability resonates with me because my dad had us pull up stakes and move every few years in pursuit of his career when we were growing up.
ReplyDelete"The Sound of Music" is quite good, although I admit I don't think of it as a Christmas movie.
There is a sort of not-quite-A-list, but not-quite-B-movie from the 1940s, called Christmas In Connecticut, which can be watchable. My dad, who had been declaiming since as long as I was sentient sometime in the early 1960s, and probably earlier, that they don't make good movies anymore like they used to, originally turned us on to it. At some point in the early 1980s, he got a VCR and a subscription to AMC, which in those days showed films from the 1940s and 1950s, and within six months had recorded a library of a couple of hundred films from that era, some of them very fine, some of them pretty bad, and a lot somewhere in between. My sisters liked Christmas in Connecticut because it had a strong (if amusingly grifting) woman in the center of it, Barbara Stanwyck as a young single urban magazine writer pretending to be one of those super-homemaker married columnists, kind of a proto-Martha Stewart for a Better Homes and Gardens type of rag, ostensibly living with her husband and baby on a farm in Connecticut. She's romantically pursued by this wet blanket of an architect whom she can't really stand but who does conveniently own an actual farm (in a genteel, dilettante-ish sort of way) in Connecticut. He wears her down until she finally agrees to marry him. Then a handsome young naval hero shows up at the farm on Christmas Eve. From there, it all proceeds more or less according to Hallmark, although maybe a couple of clicks better than what the Hallmark factory churns out.
"Miracle on 34th Street" can still be pretty watchable, although I've seen it too many times, too.
Your dad might also enjoy "Winter Meeting" with Bette Davis and Jim Davis (no relation). She is a Unitarian poet estranged from her mother. He has thought about becoming a priest. Not Betty's finest, but interesting for being a socially relevant movie for grown-ups ca. 1948. I might look for it on Prime on one of these gloomy afternoons when I need an attitude adjustment.
DeleteIt is interesting that "It's a Wonderful Life" was not a big success at the box office when it first came out, evidently right after WWII people thought it was too serious. It got popular in the 60s when it came out on television. That's when I first saw it. There was an interesting version that came out later with Marlo Thomas as the leading character. I liked it, but the one with Jimmy Stuart is still the classic.
DeleteI've never seen The Miracle on 34th Street in the movie form, but saw it as a high school musical in which my brother did a very good job playing a drunken Santa Claus. Somehow I think that might be problematic in the present day.
Will have to check out "Winter Meeting".
DeleteIstm that a lot of Christmas movies deal with loss/loneliness and reconnection. So I'll try another stab at bringing this issue to the group on the slim chance that anyone wants to explore ways that parishes might address the concerns of older adults who, let's face it, are the majority of folks in the pews every week. Heard about this group on NPR this morning.: https://www.artandhealing.org/unlonely-project/
ReplyDelete